Every now and again on social media and desperately poor blogs, a post will pop up reporting on a "White Gold SLR" with a quad-turbo V10 developing 1600 horsepower and 2800NM (2065lb/ft) when running on biofuel, a sub-2.0s 0-60mph time and a standing quarter time of 6.89 seconds. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but it's just popped up again on Google+ (yeah yeah, make your jokes) with people going "OMG sikkkk car bruv" as if that isn't the highest order of bullshit.

If you follow the wrong Facebook pages you'll likely have seen it before, as it first appeared some time in 2012 and has popped up elsewhere on t'internet since (poorly-informed articles here, here and here). Fuck knows where the lies really started, although one article references this FB page, which posted it twice, only mentioning the ridiculous stats the second time around. Tracking down the true source is probably as hard as finding the first man to have sex with a chimpanzee and thus give HIV to humankind (I read it on social media, it must be true!). The associated pictures of this magic SLR tend to show it parked outside the Mall of the Emirates, who have been asked about this car before and have responded with "we get so many cars each day that it's impossible to know when this one was here," which they probably followed up with "now bugger off."

The first part should be pretty easy to disprove. 18K white gold? Try chrome wrap, as YouTube car pornographer Marchettino can show us up close:

White gold is a very soft and heavy material to use for a car body, and coating the carbon fibre that McLaren gifted the SLR in white gold plate would apparently cause it to melt off in the 50°C heat of the UAE, where this car apparently spends most of its time. So it's not white gold. Not even maybe. It's a chrome vinyl wrap. You might as well paint a teapot brown and tell everyone it's chocolate.

As for the engine, the video does occasionally show the car accelerating just a little bit, at which point you hear supercharger whine (so not a quad-turbo engine like a Veyron or EB110) and the deep grumbling of what's far more likely to be the standard 5.5-litre V8 than a bespoke biofuel V10, perhaps with a tweaked exhaust. The BRABUS badging and wheels suggest that the Mercedes lump this car still has could have more than the standard 625 horsepower, but according to their website their modifications can "only" take it up to 650 or 720 metric horsepower (PS). So, by extension, the preposterous stats and straight-line times aren't true either, unless Arabian biofuel gives an engine more than twice as much power somehow...

I know these word-of-mouth nonsense stories are what social media pages are about, and no respectable car blog or publication has given this a second glance, but I just don't get how people can believe this one at all, especially people who purport to be car fans. This kind of thing is so damn easy to make up and spread around that you shouldn't even consider the idea of a car like this being the real deal.

Now, THIS, on the other hand:

This is a special one-off Alfa Romeo commissioned by an enigmatic Russian billionaire that nobody's ever seen or heard from. Called the 14C Razzo Rosso, this car uses a bespoke carbon fibre and titanium spaceframe chassis to give a weight of just 495kg (1091lbs) even though it's packing a 9.0-litre V14 hydrogen combustion engine - described by some as "like a 9-litre Formula 1 engine" in engineering terms - and advanced active all wheel drive. These unique features give it 1705PS and a 0-60 time of 1.7 seconds, 0-100mph in 3.8s and a top speed of 301mph, but also 60mpg and no CO2 emissions at all. Apparently the owner, who spent $5.4million to have the car specially made with its whale-penis leather interior and graphene body coated in seal blood, likes to outrun the cops every morning on the way to work with it!!!!!!!!!!!!